


April Fool's Drabble

by NoCapes



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Drabble, Other, random head canons, surprise kids on doorsteps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 01:49:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoCapes/pseuds/NoCapes
Summary: I give you an old drabble from my folders of long ago. It sadly doesn’t have an end cause I was never sure where to cut it off. Feel free to create the rest yourself.Timeline wise - this is after all the whatever-goes-down in the fic. A happy ending with a house and a dog. And hi-jinks ensue. This is based on an old joke I made ages back. Many apologies to those who don’t get the gag. Kid shows up on Engie's doorstep - No Prize if anyone figures out who the kid is.





	April Fool's Drabble

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages back not really for public consumption (that's why it cuts off randomly and has a few bits where my notes are left in) more for an exercise. I had a random idea/head canon strike me so this happened. I posted this as an April Fool's gag on the tumblr blog. With Nipplegate being a thing I'm slowly moving stuff from tumblr to other venues and realized this had no other home. 
> 
> This takes place probably sometime after Smoke - they've probably retired from the RED/BLU mess and decided to stick together.

It had been an uneventful dusty summer day.  The few chores around the farm had been done in the early morning before the Texas sun started beating down. There was some minor maintenance work that needed to be done on Sam’s tractor. But Engineer would get to that when the sun wasn’t so high. In the mean time he’d been dozing on the couch watching a Western on the television with Fleabag the hound asleep on his feet. Spy had declared he’d seen enough John Wayne in his lifetime and was in some other part of the house reading.  The Spook was getting restless again, soon he’d start insisting they leave the farm and go traveling.

The doorbell rang startling the Texan awake, Fleabag bayed loudly running to greet whoever was at the door. “Better not be another salesman” he muttered darkly as he slowly rose from the couch, he had hoped they would have learned after the last time. “Just a minute” he called stomping to the door. “Dangit Flea!” he grunted grabbing the dog by the collar dragging him back so he could open the door. “Can ah hel-” he froze as he squinted at the figure through the screen door. 

It was a young girl in a red dress and a beat up red sun hat that threatened to slip over her eyes. “Hullo” she said quietly pushing her hat back to peer up at him. She looked to be no older than six he guessed, too young to be out by herself. Something about her made him doubt she was here to sell cookies. Girl scouts didn’t usually bring suitcases with them. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a sinking suspicion he knew who to blame for this.

His suspicions were confirmed as she finally added  "I’m looking for my Papa.“  

This was a bad dream, he tried to tell himself, closing his eyes for a moment. He would open them and he’d still be on the couch with his movie.  He opened his eyes and the girl and her red hat and suitcase were still standing on the doorstep with no sign of disappearing into thin air."Spah!” he yelled into the house “Git out here!”

Unable in good conscience to leave the child on the doorstep he opened the screen door and gestured for her to come in. Quietly she stepped inside, she turned to her suit case but the Texan had already picked it up. He noticed it was battered but well made, labels from all over the world covered the scuffed leather.

“Who was at the door?” Spy asked walking into the room.“Relative of yours?” he asked glancing at the girl, his eyes seemed to avoid looking at the suitcase.

“Actually-”

“Papa!” the girl cut the Texan off walking towards the Frenchman.

A choked sound emitted from Spy’s mouth instead of words as he stood rigid in the doorway.

“-She says she’s one of yours.” Engineer finished lamely.

The child stopped in front of him oblivious to the fact the man was turning a rather unpleasant shade of gray.  She placed her chubby hand into her dress pocket and pulled out a small sealed envelope and held it out to him. Quickly regaining composure Spy accepted the letter, ripping it open. His eyes darted across the papers, narrowing with every line before his hand lowered  and glowered at the girl.

“What’s it say?” the Texan asked but neither the girl or Frenchman offered any explanation.

Brushing past the girl he took the letter from Spy’s slack grip. It was elegant stationary, the message itself was French written in neat flowery feminine hand writing.

“This is a trick.” Spy insisted loudly to no one in particular. “ _Putain de menteur_ ,”

“Don’t use language like that with kids present.”  Engineer scolded him as he tried to translate the letter but was having trouble concentrating, his mind reeling through too many things at once.  Who was this girl? Where was her mother? Who  _was_ her mother?  How did she come to be here in the middle of Texas?

“ _Merde! -_ I’ll use whatever language I feel lik-” the Frenchman found himself silenced by one of the Texan’s hands over his mouth.

“ _Hush_.” he hissed, looking at the ceiling and began slowly counting to ten, trying to organize his thoughts.

He never doubted that Spy had children. From his understanding of the man and his past misadventures, he was willing to guess the snake had fathered at least three or four. Though that was a rather conservative guess he told himself. He never expected to meet any of them. Let alone for one to end up on  _his_  doorstep.

He hoped this wasn’t the start of a trend.

Finally reaching ten he lowered his hand from Spy’s mouth hoping the idiot would have the sense to stay quiet for the time being. Looking back down at the girl he noted the resemblance between her and Spy. The same eyes, dark hair, thankfully she seemed to have been spared the man’s nose.

“Where’s your Mama  sweetie?” he asked kneeling down to look her in the eye.

“Dunno, she dropped me off at the gate.” the girl informed him simply as if this was the most normal thing in the world .“She told me I was staying here for a while with my Papa and his friend while she worked.” Well that explained the suitcase, and why he hadn’t heard a car drive up. Or why the girl didn’t seem confused to see him in addition to her father.

“She’s not staying here!” Spy insisted to no one who was listening.

“What’s your name?”  

The girl’s eyes darted up at Spy and back to him, “Carmen” she responded, not the least bit shy.

“Ah tell yah what, Carmen. Let’s go to the kitchen, get you some cookies and milk while your Papa and I talk. Would you like that?”

The girl eagerly nodded and followed him into the small kitchen. He sat her down at the table and pulled a couple of cookies out of the cookie jar. He nervously bit into one of the cookies, hardly tasting it as he chewed into dust,  before putting the entire ceramic jar in front of the girl. Glaring at Spy who had tried to palm a cookie for himself,  he poured the child a large mug of milk and left the jug out where she could hopefully reach it.

“Now you stay here, while we talk in the other room.  Alright?”  Carmen was too occupied with her mouth full of crumbs to do much more than nod. With a wide forced smile for the girl’s benefit he grabbed Spy’s arm before he could slip away and dragged the protesting man out of the kitchen to the other end of the house, hopefully out of ear shot.  

“That girl and her  _putain_ mère are liars!” Spy insisted to Engineer who leaned on the door that was only escape from the room.

“ _Who’s her mother?”_ he asked irritably.

“It was a long time ago.” the Frenchman answered defensively. “Years - before you and I-”

“-That’s obvious.  _So who is she?”_

“I was trailing her for BLU, they suspected she was courier for an exchange of Austrailium from a black market source. Then one thing led to another and-” the man shrugged pulling his cigarette case out of his pocket.

“ _So who is she?”_

“She was an agent for Reliable Excavation. One of their spies, our paths had never crossed before. Never crossed after. It was a- one night tryst.”

“ _Yah slept with an enemy Spy?!”_   

“I slept with you!” Spy pointed out.  "Still do,“ he added.

"T-that’s-” the Texan sputtered. “t-that’s neither here nor there!” he insisted feeling his ears burn. “B-but an  _enemy spy?_ ” He shouldn’t be surprised that the man had affairs with others from RED. He’d known that the Frenchman had little regard for rules or boundaries. At least that explained how the woman had tracked Spy down here. He imagined that only another person in the same line of work could manage that. He held the letter over his face and skimmed the letter haphazardly translating the French writing in his head.

_Dear [what the hell does she call him - his name - his alias? Spy? Shithead? Idiot?]_

_I see you and your pet cowboy have settled down for now. You do like to make yourself difficult to find don’t you?_

_You’ve had your fun, now it’s time to take responsibility for past mistakes. I’m sure you don’t remember much of me or that night we fought in Las Vegas. Or what came after. I wouldn’t have thought much of it myself, if it wasn’t for the end results. Her name is Carmen by the way._

_I’ve been called away to a job - I’ll be away for an unknown amount of time and it seemed it was high time the two of you got to know each other. I’m sure you’d agree with me that a child should know their parents. If only to see what poor life choices look like._

_Before you start calling me a liar I have included some lab work you should see. My Medic owed me a couple of favors-._

Curious Engineer flipped to the next page. It looked like some sort of lab chart, “She included a paternity test.” he said quietly.

“ _What?_ ” the chart was yanked out of Engineers hands roughly. “ _How did she even_ …” Spy trailed off muttering profanity darkly under his breath.

The Texan sighed and went back to reading the letter.

- _I expect you to take good care of her since she is your own flesh and blood. I will be back to collect her. Do not think you can dump her in an orphanage for your convenience. If you do, or if anything else happens to her be assured I will hunt you and every alias you ever used down and make you suffer. The same threat applies to your pudgy companion as well._

“Pudgy?” he repeated - rubbing the back of his neck.  

  “This has got to be a fake!” Spy fumed on, the floorboards creaking as he paced, “Where the hell would she even get a sample?”

Engineer sighed, half an hour ago he had been dozing on the couch, planning repairs to a tractor not worrying about some kid that got dumped on his doorstep. “Spook” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Spook” he repeated again “Could'ya- Could'ya stop pacin’ for a sec?”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay - for those who don't get the joke - the girl is Carmen Sandiego - a edutainment character from my childhood. She's a globetrotting ne'r do well that steals landmarks and leaves clues for you to solve and maybe learn about history and geography along the way. 
> 
> I discovered in a wiki walk - her initial birthday was listed as sometime in 1968 - and that her original origin (this was rewritten later) was that she was a spy who had switched sides so many times not even she could remember who her employers were originally. This and her obsession with hats and monochromatic wardrobe reminded me of some other spies - that are less educational. So this happened. 
> 
> Sorry this cuts off - I never figured out where to end it - short of wrting a random AU where Carmen Sandiego has two daddies and lots of merc uncles and a mom that shows up sometimes.


End file.
